Armour-crafting?

Tavore1138

So - I have a dream!

I am a l50 crafter in all crafts so I have a vested interest here but how about this:

ZOS introduce armour 'crafting'.

Basically it works like this..

At a crafting table you get the option to break down a set of 5 pieces instead of a single item - the 5 pieces must make a set, you lose all 5 pieces, it uses a research slot and it takes 60 days (less research points to minimum 50).

What you learn from it is the 3 basic traits plus the set skill.

Each trait/skill has a range of levels. So the set skill is always level 5, a skill like +4% weapon crit, +12 magic regen or +87 stamina could be level 2,3 or 4.

Once you have researched several sets you could create a custom set based on what you have researched.

But never more than a single 'level 5' set bonus. But you could do multiple set 2/3/4 bonuses of the same kind - so if you want 3 layers of +87 stamina that is fine, you could even add a layer 5 bonus of +87 stamina but you could never have more tha one special level 5 effect.

The exception? There are some sets with a level 3 special - if you learn those then you could use that bonus at level 3 or 4 and still use another bonus at level 5.

The result is that you get sets by design, but always limited by what the real sets can do.

The risk - there is a synergy between a unique l3 and a unique l5 skill that would be game breaking.

TL,DR - custom armour by crafters based on existing set options.

Hamfast

Your plan is interesting but flawed because...

While I am not sure I would use the term "Flawed" but I do think it's an interesting idea... that would have been better on the crafting forum... that being said...

I think the idea of "Research" could be stretched beyond "traits" to include styles, instead of researching a trait, the crafter could research the style instead of looking in containers for motifs...

In the case of Crafted Sets, they are another item that could be researched, but like the styles and traits, the only thing added to the creation is a location, not an item.

What you are trying to do is allow crafters to create the specialized item sets at the cost of a few items and 2 months... after which you can add multiple items (along with the trait and style) without much additional cost. There are 23 crafted sets requiring 2 to 9 traits... while some of these are repeated, it's still a good number of additional features to add...

From the coding/database stand point, an item is most likely described by values to include level (1 to VR14 - 63), Style (14), Trait (10) and Set (0 - 23 so 24) this means 211,680 different choices for each smith crafted items, so 7,197,120 total items as they are now... add to that the non-crafted sets (About 100), special (Quest rewards) items and jewelry... What your idea would mean would mean like 6 times the number at least, defined by adding the codes for each of the new effects.

Beyond the sheer number of combinations, you did not establish any level restrictions, (Crafting Level as opposed to adventuring level) beyond the idea that you are at level 50 (maxed) in all of them. if implemented, the crafter should be "Able" to craft the original items to be used in the research if craftable, and a similar thing with the non-craftable items... also, they must have spent the full 4 points in research, in fact I think I would add and require a 5th skill point to get the research slot that can be used for a trait or to research sets peices... lastly, I would not allow one research period to cover all possible outcomes, but, like the flowers as they are used in alchemy, researching 2 to 5 items would grant a chance (25% for each piece over 1) of getting one of the effects that all the items have in common. Only after all common effects are learned, then the last, the named effect, could be learned.

As nice as this all sounds, I expect it would take a lot of resources to implement it and there are many better uses for those resources.